1. (2022高二下·上海期中) reading comprehension

Our lives are made up of human-machine interactions一with smartphones, televisions, computers—that have the power to delight and, often, frustrate. Into this area has stepped a new class of professional: the user-experience, or UX, designer, whose job is to see a product not from an engineer's, marketer's, or legal department's perspective but from the viewpoint of the user alone. And to insist that the customer should not have to learn to speak the company's internal language. The company should learn to speak the customer's.

According to a recent survey, the role of UX designers has become a fixture on those year-end "hottest job" lists. If you want to study UX, you now have the option at some three dozen institutions in the United States, including Carnegie Mellon and the University of Washington. But Ford is one of the few major industrial companies in the U. S. to put a UX expert, Jim Hackett, in charge.

At present, the question facing the car industry is basically whether high-tech giants such as Tesla and Google can learn car-making technology trains faster than Ford, GM, and other carmakers can learn software and algorithms. But Hackett reflects Ford's bet that the winner won't be the best chassis (底盘)maker or software maker, but the company that nails the interaction between man and machine. "One of the things that drew me to Jim was his commitment to design thinking, which puts the human being at the center of the equation/5 explained Bill Ford, the company's executive chairman.

Hackett retired from Steelcase, a furniture maker, in 2014 and in 2016, Bill Ford hired him to run the automaker's Smart Mobility subsidiary, which was tasked with rethinking from the ground up how cars would be driven, powered, and owned. "This is what we call the design gap," said Hackett in an interview, pointing to the space between two lines on a graph he'd drawn on a whiteboard. One line climbs up—this is a company's skill at making things, which goes up over time. Below it is a downward line, representing a company's understanding of the customer's experience. This, he said, can decline over time, as a company loses sight of the problems it's in the business of solving. The design gap may be noticeable when the job is, say, building a marginally better tailgate for the Ford F-150. But it becomes positively yawning when your industry is so thoroughly turned on its head that you're forced to ask some basic questions: Do people want to own their cars or share them? Drive them or have them driven? The flood of new technologies makes everything possible.

1. （1） Which of the following statements best describes a UX designer's responsibility?

   A . He is devoted to designing innovative products. B . He is devoted to making a product satisfy users' needs. C . He is devoted to improving a company's internal language. D . He is devoted to understanding human-machine interactions.
3. （2） What can be inferred from the passage?

   A . UX designers are regarded as one of those best-paid jobs. B . High-tech giants have taken the lead in car manufacturing. C . Companies are laying greater emphasis on customers' feelings. D . The UX courses provided by the US institutions are far from enough,
5. （3） Ford hires Jim Hackett because the company believes that _______.

   A . it is currently facing the biggest challenge that needs a new perspective B . Hackett's design thinking is quite different from other UX professionals C . customers' experience plays a decisive role in the car-making competition D . Steelcase gave Hackett enough time and experience to grow up into an expert
7. （4） What is Jim Hackett most likely to agree with?

   A . For should pay less attention to new technologies. B . Ford has long been ignoring customers' experience. C . Ford is no longer a leading company in auto making skills. D . Ford has made a wrong decision to build a tailgate for the F-150.